Ancient-Future Worship (Ancient-Future)

E. Webber Robert

Description

With the many models of worship available, choosing a style to worship God can be a bit overwhelming. Is it better to go with traditional or contemporary models? Christians may find themselves asking how early believers worshiped and whether they can provide insight into how we should praise God today.Rooted in historical models and patristic church studies, Ancient-Future Worship examines how early Christian worship models can be applied to the postmodern church. Pastors and church leaders, as well as younger evangelical and emerging church groups, will find this last book in the respected Ancient-Future series an invaluable resource for authentic worship.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian worship

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441200686
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ancient-Future WORSHIP
A NCIENT -F UTURE S ERIES
Series Titles
Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (1999)
Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community (2003)
Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year (2004)
The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (2006)
Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God s Narrative (2008)
Related Titles by Robert E. Webber
The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (2002)

2008 by Joanne Webber
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording- without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-0068-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture marked NLT is taken from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Foreword reprinted from John D. Witvliet, Bob Webber: Memory Hope, Books Culture 13, no. 4 (July/August 2007), 8, http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/004/7.8.html. Used and slightly adapted with permission of the author and Christianity Today International/ Books Culture magazine.
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
Ancient-Future Worship is lovingly dedicated to my children, their spouses, my grandchildren, and a few select pets.
John and Isabel Webber Natalie and Raquel
Alexandra and Jack Wilson Quinn
Stefany and Tom Welch Tommy, Jack, Ben, Lexie
Jeremy and Susie Buffam their dogs, Condi and The Gipper
I have always loved you in life, and I will love you still in death.
Contents
Foreword : Bob Webber: Memory and Hope
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Ancient-Future Series
Introduction: A Personal Note
Part 1 Rediscovering God s Story in Worship
1. Worship Does God s Story
2. Worship Remembers the Past
3. Worship Anticipates the Future
4. How the Fullness of God s Story Became Lost
Part 2 Applying God s Story to Worship
5. Worship: Transformed by Remembrance and Anticipation
6. Word: Transformed by the Narrative Nature of Scripture
7. Eucharist: Transformed by the Presence of God at Table
8. Prayer: Transformed by Recovering the Style of Ancient Worship
Conclusion: My Journey toward an Ancient-Future Worship
Appendix: A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Foreword Bob Webber: Memory and Hope
The following tribute was presented at the Wheaton College Theology Conference banquet in April 2007 and later presented via videotape to Bob Webber, who was unable to attend. The conference theme, Ancient Faith for the Church s Future, was one of the central motifs in Robert Webber s writings. Webber died the following week.
D ear Robert,
Two of life s best gifts are memory and hope. This is true in psalmody and eucharistic praying but also in personal and professional friendship. It is a great honor to practice both of these gifts with respect to your life and work, especially here at Wheaton College.
When I think of your written and published works, I remember with deep gratitude opening up Worship Is a Verb at about age eighteen and feeling an Emmaus-like burning of the heart over its conviction about our risen Lord and its catholic vision for worship.
Publisher s Note: Bob Webber s passion for what he termed an ancient-future faith had an evangelistic impact over the years on many students and readers, especially in contemporary church worship circles. The following tribute sets Bob s contributions in perspective and was delivered just prior to his death in 2007. For this his last book in the Ancient-Future series we thought this remembrance to be a fitting foreword to Ancient-Future Worship . May Bob s ministry and legacy live on through these pages.
Some years later, I remember receiving seven boxes of files, which became the last volumes of the Complete Library of Christian Worship, and sensing the breadth of the landscape that you explored- the whole Bible, all of systematic theology, two thousand years of church history, every one of the church s various ministries, in one hundred or more denominations (all, it seemed, in a single summer). Later, I remember arriving at a hotel in Carol Stream on Monday to learn that we would be starting and finishing our outline of the Renew songbook in four days. I remember how you said then (and many times since), I love a project.
As I think about all of your published work, I am struck by some particular charisms that you have shared so freely with us.
First, you have introduced so many of us to the early church as a period of unique theological insight, spiritual vitality, and prophetic correction. You did so in a way that energized practicing pastors and lay Christians. It was said of Princeton s Peter Brown, He rescued the past from the tyranny of stereotypes. That is also true for you, especially when it comes to worship.
Part of your work has been simply to get us up to speed with a new set of terms. You taught us that epiphany and Eucharist are useful terms. You taught us to pronounce epiclesis , anamnesis , and Hippolytus . You also exercised restraint, sparing us the frustration of feeling that we had to use the words catechumenate and mystagogy when all we wanted to do was lead people on a Journey to Jesus .
You also coined phrases about our emerging love for the early
You also coined phrases about our emerging love for the early church, leading the way as blended worship became convergence worship and then ancient-future worship. Many publishers wanted to know what you were calling it-a sign that you were not only describing a movement but shaping it.
In all of these projects, you were especially adept at writing for people with little previous exposure to the material, a pedagogical skill very much undervalued in the academy. So often when writing reaches out to broad audiences, it ceases to be compelling. But I ve found that people who read your material actually end up learning things, rather than simply having their prior assumptions confirmed.
Part of your skill is your ability to map big stretches of territory (historically, conceptually, geographically), never letting us miss the forest for the trees. Your most recent book, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life , gathers the fruit of a lifetime of teaching this material in congregations. You ve chosen a set of the most crucial themes for promoting vibrant Christian faith and life, and you pursue them doggedly. Some of your many students will later come along to study the leaves on some of the trees in the forests you describe. But I hope they do not forget that a map of the big picture is vitally important for the life of the church.
Second, you did not shrink back from honest criticism and polemic. Like Irenaeus, you have been against heresies. Providentially, you have been against some of the same ones he was against.
Reading your work again this winter, I have been struck by the multiple objects of your published indignation: spirit-matter dualism, ahistorical mysticism, experientialism, legalism, romanticism, narcissism, McSpirituality, privatism, Gnosticism, and love songs to Jesus. You reserved equal ink to protest intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. You even put your feelings in your titles, giving us a 1984 Christianity Today article, Let s Put Worship into the Worship Service: Let s End Gospel Pep Rallies and Sunday Morning Variety Shows, a 1985 book Secular Humanism: Threat and Challenge , and a 1999 article in Leadership , Reducing God to Music? We Experience God in More Than Songs and Segues. Indeed, the Chicago Call uses the locution we deplore five times.
We knew that even when you criticized us, you loved us. The twinkle in your eye gave you away. And so did your ability to see both sides of complex issues. You embraced tensions and pulled us back from unnecessary polarities, calling us to both social justice and personal transformation, both hand-clapping exuberance and profound introspection, both restless yearning for change and a profound gratitude for the inheritance of faith. You called us to both truth and passion.
You are one of the few writers who, despite a convert s zeal, could have the poise to end Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church with a section titled Evangelical Contribution to Canterbury: What Evangelicals Bring to the Liturgical Tradition.
Third, your writings have taught us how teachers can helpfully work at several levels at the same time. You wrote books for classrooms, continuing education events, and small groups. When evangelicals got excited about this or that genre, your entrepreneurial instincts unfailingly seized the opportunity, giving us inductive Bible